Every now and then I use Blasty or search Google for pirate copies of ebooks I publish. At my last attempt I found 23 copies of pirated books, all available as pdf files.
Why do these sites favour this format? It is clearly unsuitable for e-reading on a tablet, an e-reader or on a smartphone since on these smaller scale screens the text won't flow and a huge amount of scrolling in two directions will be required. The answer is that pdf files can easily have malware inserted which infects the reader's device.
I went to see if I could establish the source of these ebooks. Some displayed Amazon ASIN numbers and others displayed Smashwords ISBN numbers. In many cases to download the file I was required to create an account at the site - OK I used an incognito Tor browser. I gave a disposable email address and a password I didn't use elsewhere but then they asked for credit card details 'which wouldn't be charged'. Sorry I'm not daft enough to provide that information to a known criminal website.
Smashwords gives readers the option of downloading ebooks as pdf files. Is that sensible? Are we making things too easy for the pirates? Of course those who pirate ebooks are quite capable of buying a book at Amazon, removing any DRM if used, and then converting a Mobi file to pdf in a program such as calibre. They would then return the ebook within an hour or so citing 'purchased by mistake' or other reason. If we make pdf files available at Smashwords we save them a lot of time.
I intend to put a statement in my books about pdf files being an unsatisfactory e-reading format and advising that there are NO legal pdf versions of my books available. To do that I must first remove the checkmark for pdf on my Smashwords book details pages. Should be simple huh? Except Smashwords re checks everything if you do that and re-converts the files. Does that seem unnecessary?
Do you think we should remove the pdf option? Or perhaps leave it on the basis that those who visit pirate book sites deserve all the problems they will get.